ADDRESS. XXix 
_ Observatory of Greenwich. This establishment is besides so useful through 
the facilities which it offers for researches into the working of self-register- 
ing instruments which are there constructed, that I earnestly hope it may 
be sustained as heretofore by annual grants from our funds, particularly 
as it is accomplishing considerable results at very small cost. 
. Our volume for the last year contains several communications on physical 
_ subjects from eminent foreign cultivators of science, whom we have the 
_ pleasure of reckoning amongst our corresponding members, and whose com- 
- munications, according to the usage of the Association, have been printed 
entire amongst the reports. In a discussion of the peculiarities by which the 
great comet of 1843 was distinguished, Dr. Von Boguslawski of Breslau has 
_ taken the occasion to announce the probability, resting on calculations which 
_ will be published in Schumacher’s ‘ Astronomische Nachrichten,’ of the iden- 
tity of this comet with several of a similar remarkable character recorded in his- 
__ tory, commencing with the one described by Aristotle, which appeared in the 
_ year 371 before our era: should his calculations be considered to establish 
this fact, Dr. Von Boguslawski proposes that the comet should hereafter be 
distinguished by the name of “ Aristotle’s Comet.” This communication 
contains also some highly ingenious and important considerations relating to 
the physical causes of the pheenomena of the tails of comets. 
Dr. Paul Erman of Berlin, father of the adventurous geographical explorer 
and mugnetician who was one of the active members of the magnetic con- 
gress at Cambridge, has communicated through his son some interesting ex- 
-periments on the electro-dynamic effects of the friction of conducting sub- 
stances, and has pointed out the differences between these and normal 
thermo-electric effects. Baron von Senftenberg (who is an admirable ex- 
ample of how much may be done by a liberal zeal for science combined 
with an independent fortune) has published an account of the success with 
which self-registering meteorological instruments have been established at his 
observatory at Senftenberg, as well as at the national observatory at Prague. 
OF our own members, Mr. Birt has contributed a second report on Atmo- 
spheric Waves, in continuation of the investigation which originated in the 
discussion by Sir John Herschel, of the meteorological observations which, 
at his suggestion, were made in various parts of the globe, at the periods of 
_ the equinoxes and solstices, commencing with the year 1834. 
i In a communication to the Meeting of the Association at York, Colonel 
_ Sabine traced with great clearness (from the hourly observations at Toronto) 
_ the effect of the single diurnal and single annual progressions of tempera- 
_ ture, in producing on the mixed vapourous and gaseous elements of the atmo- 
sphere, the well-known progressions of daily and yearly barometrical pressure. 
To the conclusions whieh he then presented, and which apply, perhaps gene- 
rally, to situations not greatly elevated in the interior of large tracts of land, 
the same author has added, in the last volume, a valuable explanation of 
the more complicated phenomena which happen at points where land and 
sea breezes, flowing with regularity, modify periodically and locally the con- 
stitution and pressure of the atmosphere. Taking for his data the two-hourly 
observations executed at the observatory of Bombay by Dr. Buist, Colonel 
_ Sabine has succeeded in demonstrating for this locality a double daily pro- 
_ gression of gaseous pressure, in accordance with the flow and re-flow of the 
- air from surfaces of land and water which are unequally affected by heat. 
And thus the diurnal variation of the daily pressure at a point within the 
tropics, and on the margin of the sea, is explained by the same reasoning 
_ which was suggested by facts observed in the interior of the vast continent 
_ of North America. 
